Cheap things come to those who wait. If you’ve had your eye on a TI Experimenters Board (MSP-EXP430FR5739) now’s the time to pull the trigger. You can use the coupon code MSP430_FRAM to get 50% off. This pulls the total price down to $14.50 plus shipping with several readers reporting free shipping.
The board features an upgraded MSP430. Instead of using flash memory, it’s got ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) which boots the power savings of these aready lean-mean chips.
We’ve posted a few deals from Texas Instruments before, like the announcement of the Launchpad which was just $4.30, as well as a coupon-deal gone awry with the evalBot. There were huge threads in those posts reporting back how long shipping took, as well as how well the codes worked. So feel free to share your thoughts on this deal by leaving a polite comment.
Of course if you get one, we want to see what you do with it. Don’t forget to write up your projects and send in a tip.
@WestfW: Must be nice. I ordered mine several days ago and it still shows “Processing Order”. I sure hope it doesn’t end up like the Launchpad, which took *MONTHS* to arrive.
Wow,
Ordered yesterday, delivered today!!
Well done TI.. :)
I placed two separate orders. The first one was immediately processed and mailed out. Arrived in two days. The second one is in a state of “processing”. I wonder if they are running low on immediate stock and are trying to limit these so enough go out immediately? My Launchpad stuff shipped from Singapore last time, but these seem to be shipping from Texas.
I fired it up and ran the demo. Cool little board for $15. It’s only marginally larger than the Launchpad and the emulation section is exactly the same (physically). At first glance, I don’t see the proper header files for this new MCU in my msp430 GCC libraries, but I’m going to poke around more later this week.
Ordered yesterday and 3 days ago. Both are still processing. :-P
Got mine two days after I ordered it! Way better than when it took months for my Launchpad to arrive. Shipped out of Texas to New York. I hope mspgcc4 has some support for it.
ordered it 2 days ago and shockingly it arrived this morning in the UK. That’s pretty impressive!
Ordered it two days ago and arrived today in the Netherlands. Again, just as the launchpads, nicely packaged and very complete.
Let’s play!
Where do people order this from… I’m in America. Arrow, avnet, mouser ship here. Only avnet let me use a coupon code and they said it was invalid.
Ordered last weekend, arrived today in the UK. shipping free as others have mentioned. Thanks for the heads up on this, fantastic package for the price and well done TI for the offer and the quality purchasing “experience” as the marketing dept would say.
Looking forward to the weekend for a play :)
Please enlighten me. It appears that FRAM in these microcontrollers is used in the same way Flash is normally used: that is, easily rewritable during debugging or field updates, but essentialy used as a ROM 99.999% of the lifetime. Its size of 16k is also minuscule. Why should it bother me so much that write speeds and energy consumption are so awesome?
Soo… I ordered my devboard last friday and it still hasn’t even *shipped*, and although this is annoying as hell, I can’t complain at that price.
@matt: you have to order these through the TI eStore in order to use the coupon.
@svofski: Among many other reasons, any application that uses battery power should see a lot of benefit from the low power, and FRAM can handle a whole lot more reads/writes than flash can. Assuming the advertising is even remotely accurate, it’s a much better, more flexible product than flash.
@Inventorjack: I agree with your points. It’s just it seems to me that in a microcontroller they are marginally important, if at all. Re: power consumption, it could be the only real benefit, but they didn’t say anything about read, they only stressed benefits regarding writes.
FRAM is a very interesting tech. I’ve no idea really, but I imagine it as a tiny version of core memory :) I just don’t really understand why they decided to award FRAM memory to such a tiny and weak microcontroller, which seems to be incapable of exercising any of its beneficial characteristics.
Lauchpad arrived a couple of days ago and the experimenters board arrived just now. So all up and running in less than six days, which considering the low price, the free shipping, and the fact I’m in the UK, is pretty damn good. Just in time for the weekend too :-)
got mine, too. Pretty fast delivery to germany. But the fedex driver was kinda suicidal. lol.
Arrived today, even though yesterday it still said the order was processing. I’m happy. Can’t wait to start playing :)
Ordered mine, arrived few days later! (3 or 4). I also ordered a launchpad, because with LaunchPad I can use Grace which simplifies up development. Am pretty confident I will be up and running in no time. Texas Instruments sure knows how to please geeks like me. Well done!!
We’re excited to hear how everyone is taking advantage of the 50% off coupon, and we love seeing stories about TI MCUs in your designs! While you’re sharing stories here on HAD, feel free to also check out our brand new Make the Switch forum on E2E and tell us how TI MCUs enable you. For every success story about switching to TI, we will enter you into our monthly drawing for fun prizes! More details @ http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/f/731/t/119277.aspx
GolinHarris for Texas Instruments
Well Golin, the best part is the shipping. The rest, I have to figure it out yet :)
Still haven’t got my launchpad(s), TI support is hell to deal with and they wont cancel and refund. SAD.
Not ordering from TI again.
@Emerica We regret that you’ve had such a frustrating experience while ordering tools. If you reach out to us at adrian-fernandez@ti.com, we will work with you directly to try and solve the order issue. Apologies for the inconvenience.
GolinHarris for Texas Instruments
mine arrived in sweden ater 13 days – that’s fast! it actually took 2 days longer because fedex on the countryside only delivers twice a week.(but all parcel services do)
i’m VERRY happy.
I snagged one of these boards and a used WiiMotionPlus gyroscope for $18. Now I have all I need for a quadcopter controller!
Just got a reply from TI saying that the first 1000 uits have been ordered and so the promotional code has been discuntinued :(
What a shame. It worked 24 hours ago and i didn’t order.
@martinmunk, sorry you missed out. I received the coupon code NEWSFLASH-FRAM in my in-box a while ago for the same deal. This code still seems to work.
Hello,
The coupon code MSP430_FRAM should still work! Just worked for me!
Thanks